I bought a 3 bedroom 2.5 bathroom house, and have had 2 people renting from me for all but 1 month of the time I’ve owned the house. That income just about covers all interest costs. My cost of principal, tax and insurance is less than I was paying in rent. After tax deductions, I’m really on the plus side.

Paying additional amounts towards principal greatly reduce the interest paid over time, helping to shift the balance. (Of course that money could be put towards other investments if I was renting).

If you can purchase for a reasonable amount more on a monthly basis than the price of your monthly rental, then it is true as said above that at the end of 25 years, at least you own something. However, if in your area prices to buy are double or more the cost per month of renting, it is easy to see that that additional money, invested over 25 years, would leave you rather better situated (in terms of net worth, not to mention the ability to buy the same house outright with change to spare) than if you had bought to begin with. The realities are usually in between, and that’s the purpose of these calculators. Don’t buy into the house-as-investment mythos, unless it is actually true for your situation.

In this article, the page for the calculator in the first link has been changed and the second link was filtered by Websense (deployed by my employer) for the term “Sex” (who knows why that’s on there).

Just offering another option for readers passing by. Thanks!

Any recommendations of appropriate software would be appreciated.

You may email me at:
Dave15851585@yahoo.com

Dave R….

The Get Rich Slowly weblog points to two calculators that crunch the numbers and tell you whether or not renting or buying your place is a bigger savings. If you’re already shouldering a mortgage, you’ll need to plug in all……